Wednesday, October 20, 2010

jBPM5 and BPMN 2.0

jBPM5 introduces a new language for representing process definitions based on the BPMN 2.0 specification, replacing older (proprietary) formats like jPDL or RuleFlow. Because not everyone might be familiar with this specification, let me give you some background. [The BPMN 2.0 specification has been finalized for some time now, but still needs to go through the final steps of the administrative process. Nevertheless, the contents of the specification seems to be stable and ready to be used.]

What is BPMN 2.0?
The second version of the Business Process Model and Notation specification (BPMN 2.0) by OMG not only defines a standard on how to graphically represent a business process (like BPMN 1.x), but now also includes execution semantics for the elements defined, and an XML format on how to store (and share) process definitions.

For example, a very simple process that would write out "Hello World" when it is started would look something like this (both visual and using XML):

<definitions ... >
<process id="com.sample.bpmn.hello" name="Hello World">
<startevent id="_1" name="StartProcess">
<sequenceflow sourceref="_1" targetref="_2">
<scripttask id="_2" name="Hello">
<script>System.out.println("Hello World");</script>
<sequenceflow sourceref="_2" targetref="_3">
<endevent id="_3" name="EndProcess">

The BPMN2 specification contains an explanation of how to represent executable business processes, both visually and syntactically, by combining a large set of different node types (and related elements). jBPM5 supports most of the "Common Executable" subset of the BPMN2 specification (containing the most common node types and attributes for specifying executable business processes) and already a few more node types. The documentation gives a detailed overview of which elements an attributes exactly.

To get started, the BPMN2 specification obviously serves as the reference, but additional to that, the jbpm-bpmn2 module contains a lot of junit tests for each of the currently supported node types. These test processes can also serve as simple examples: they don't really represent an entire real life business processes but can definitely be used to show how specific features can be used. For example, the following figures shows the flow chart of a few of those examples. The entire list can be found here.

Want to know more details, check out the BPMN2 chapter in the jBPM5 documentation.


  1. Why are you posting jBPM stuff on the Drools blog?

  2. Maybe because jBPM 5 is a merge of jBPM and Drools Flow ?

  3. jBPM5 = Drools Flow + jBPM3/4, and will remain closely integrated into the Drools code base. The Drools vision of business logic modeling and execution as a combination of rules + processes + events hasn't changed ;)

  4. I'll be updating the logo soon, so that it's a Drools & jBPM blog.

    The blog has always covered declarative programming paradigms


  5. I think this is great news. Will there be a migration path from jBPM 3/4 or Drools Flow to jBPM5.